Moussaoui himself was prosecutors' best ally

His stunning admissions got government out from under a shadow - but, as an angry FBI agent made very clear indeed, issues remain.

In the end, the most powerful and effective weapon federal prosecutors
deployed against accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was Zacarias
Moussaoui.

Indeed, the defendant in effect came to the rescue of prosecutors.
When it was revealed that one prosecutor had improperly coached
witnesses, it appeared Moussaoui might be able to dodge a death
sentence. Government prosecutors put on a brave face, but they were
clearly reeling under the impact of the setback.

However, the defendant himself blew all those scenarios to bits.
Testifying Monday - against the advice of his own attorneys - Moussaoui
enumerated the details of an elaborate al-Qaida scenario in which he
claimed he was a prime mover. After denying that he was the much-touted
missing 20th hijacker from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he testified
that he had been assigned to pilot an aircraft into the White House in
a later attack.

This was quite a departure. When pleading guilty last April, he
denied involvement in the 9/11 conspiracy and said he was taking flying
lessons to prepare for a future operation that might be mounted if
negotiations to secure the release of a radical Egyptian sheik
imprisoned in this country. .

This got the prosecutors out from under a cloud of their own making.
It did not, however, dispel the larger questions that still hover
around the Moussaoui case and the vastly larger 9/11 conspiracy as a
whole.

Driving home that point earlier in the Moussaoui case was a
stubborn, and very angry, FBI agent who testified he had run into
obstructionism and sheer witlessness in his efforts to alert the nation
to what he believed - correctly - were preparations for a major
terrorist attack. Special Agent Harry Samit supported the prosecution's
assertion that Moussaoui, arrested before the 9/11 attacks, could have
prevented them had he told the truth to his interrogators. But Samit
also testified to having encountered massive indifference from his own
superiors. In cross-examination, he acknowledged he had accused FBI
higher-ups of "obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism."

It adds up to a heartbreaking and infuriating collection of
might-have-beens. Whatever befalls Moussaoui, a reckoning still awaits
those officials responsible for ignoring those signals that, if acted
upon, could have saved thousands of lives.